If you've come anywhere near a tech site in
the last year or so, you've heard it all before. "iOS is getting stale
compared to Android! It needs some new ideas!" Whether that's actually
true is up for (heated) debate, but those with an open mind are usually willing
to acknowledge that Apple and Google could afford to swap a few ideas when it
comes to their mobile OSes.
So in a fantasy world where we could bring
over some of the better Android features to iOS, which features would those be?
Among the Ars staff, we sometimes have spirited "conversations" about
what aspects would be the best for each company to photocopy. So, we thought
we'd pick a few that might go over well with iOS users. Don't worry, we have a
companion post of features that Android could afford to steal from iOS. The
copying can go both ways.
No one wants iOS to become Android or vice
versa. This is about recognizing how to improve iOS with features that would be
useful to people depending on their smartphones for more than the occasional
text or phone call. We recognize that Apple tries to keep an eye towards
elegant implementation, too. So which features are we talking about? Glad you
asked...
Google Now-style
contextual services
For those who aren't familiar with Google
Now, it can be a little complex to explain due to its wide range of services.
(Check out Ryan Paul's writeup about it last August here on Ars.) On one side, Google
Now does Siri-like voice actions, but that's not the part we want Apple to take
from Android. The part we want is Google Now's ability to provide notifications
and other services based on a range of contextual information, such as your
location, whether you're physically moving or not, your schedule, and so on.
"Google Now can display similar routing
and traffic notifications for places that the user intends to go, by scanning
the upcoming appointments in the user’s calendar. When the user approaches a
mass transit station, the software displays transportation schedules. It can
also inform the user when they are close to points of interest—but living in
the incredibly dull suburbs outside of LA, I have yet to see this feature in
action," Paul wrote in his piece.
But Google Now can do other things too, like
examine your past search history in order to find out which sports teams you
follow regularly or whether you've looked up a flight recently. The service
will then start offering you notifications with updates about this information.
Or, as Ars Technical Director Jason Marlin pointed out, Google Now can remind
you that visitors are in town based on forwarded itineraries in your e-mail, or
alert you that a package is out for delivery—all without you having to set up
those kinds of notifications.
There will certainly be users who don't like
the idea of Apple automatically filtering through their e-mail or constantly
reading their GPS location. But it should be something you can opt in and out
of easily. And for those of us that are more comfortable with such a feature,
wouldn't it be nice if Siri could perform these same (or similar) functions?
Quick settings in
the Notification Center
There are some device settings we just plain
use more than others on a daily basis. For me, it's the Wi-Fi on/off toggle on
my iPhone, because my very Comcastic home Internet connection can't seem to
stay up when I need it. For others, it might be the screen brightness control,
the Do Not Disturb switch, or the Personal Hotspot toggle.
Android users are able to access certain
settings via their own version of the Notification Center, allowing them a
quick and easy way to toggle these without having to jump all the way out of an
app, into the Settings app, and back. As reviews editor Florence Ion said,
"It’s frustrating having to switch back to the settings to take care of
the brightness if I’m in the middle of watching something on Hulu."
If you could pull down the Notification shade
while inside of a third-party app, you could adjust the brightness (or turn off
Wi-Fi, or turn on Do Not Disturb) without having to leave the app in the first
place. At the very least, a feature like this would greatly reduce the number
of taps required in order to get a task done, thereby simplifying the usability
and making the iOS experience that much more enjoyable.
Autocorrect and
spelling suggestions
It's no secret that Apple's method of
offering spelling suggestions and autocorrect can be a huge frustration for iOS
users. You're just typing along with your thumbs when iOS decides something
you've written—perhaps street names or just plain obscure words—isn't right. At
this point, iOS begins to tell you what word it's going to autocorrect to if
you don't tap on your original word to tell it "no." If you're like
me, you tap on your original word over and over and over with your fat fingers,
but iOS autocorrects to its own word anyway. Then you have to backspace over
the entire thing and start over—usually battling with iOS yet again over the
spelling of your original word. Wash, rinse, repeat.
And, of course, there is no directly
user-editable word dictionary in iOS. You either have to enter your obscure
words as text macros (which is not exactly the original intention of that
feature), or simply hope the app in question eventually figures out the
spelling you wanted after entering it a thousand times.
There has to be a more elegant way of
doing this, right? Android users seem to have the better end of the stick when
it comes to handling autocorrections and spelling. When typing out a weird
word, the OS will offer alternate spellings as buttons above the keyboard. But
more importantly, if it manages to autocorrect your word to something you
didn't want, a single backspace will restore the original spelling. And,
it will ask you if you want to add that word to your dictionary to boot. For
the sake of all our sanity, Apple should adopt this kind of autocorrect
behavior, stat!
The ability to set
default apps
You know the drill: perhaps you prefer Chrome
over mobile Safari on your iPhone, but every time you tap a link from e-mail it
opens in Safari anyway. Or perhaps you like Google Maps or Waze, but anytime
you try to get directions from another app, it forces you to use Apple's Maps
app. There's no way to change which apps are used by the OS as defaults for
these actions—you're held hostage with Apple's own apps as the default.
Do iOS users know how to beat a dead horse on this topic? Yes. But that doesn't make
this feature any less desirable, especially since our Android-using friends get
to throw it in our faces all the time. When they launch a new browser,
the OS asks them if they want to set it as the default—thanks to the fact that
Android can recognize when you have multiple apps installed to perform similar
functions. Alternately, they can change their default apps in their settings by
going into an application manager to choose whether that app launches by
default for certain functions.
"The nice thing is that with pictures,
for instance, I can select which app to edit in without going into another app
and looking it up in the gallery," Ion said. Indeed, while perhaps not every
iOS user wants this feature, enough of us care about it to make it a worthwhile
addition to iOS.
Home screen
shortcuts to places within apps
iOS allows users to set home screen icons
that act as quick bookmarks to Web apps or other Web pages in Safari. This is
pretty convenient, but you can't use that same functionality to set a shortcut
to a "page" or functionality within native apps. Our Android friends
can, though, giving them easy access to certain information without having to
navigate there every time.
"I can set a shortcut in Google Maps
Navigation as an icon on my homepage. For instance, if I’m lost in the car and
need to get home, all I have to do is press the icon that I made and it
launches the Navigation to my home address," Ion said. "I know that
iOS has this for bookmarks and the like, but I like being able to do this with
specific applications."
Indeed, there are numerous iOS apps I use on
a regular basis that force me to navigate all the way through several screens
before getting the information I want. If I could create a new home screen icon
that links directly to a certain functionality within an app—third-party or
otherwise—it would significantly cut down on taps. (And in the winter when it's
11°F outside, that means less time with my poor, uncovered flesh being
exposed.)
This may be the least likely of all the
suggestions here, but it's one that could be potentially useful to the greatest
number of users. Just think: how many of you have at least one iOS home screen
shortcut to a Web page? Exactly.
What else?
We're sure you're eager to tell us which features you
think should be brought over from Android. Or perhaps you have ideas on how to
better implement some of the suggestions we offered. Either way, let us know in
the comments what you think. The most interesting, weird, or just plain
creative ones may make their way into a followup post. [ARSTechnica]
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